Important numbers - marketing idea

[Steve]

Here is an idea to make sure your magnet sticks around. Get a list of local important numbers in the area. Town numbers like the mayor, police, library, water and sewer dept. You can find most of these on your towns websites. Then list other numbers like local pizzerias, sub shops, and others. Maybe get a local electrician, plumber, carpenter, roofer etc. They could potentially help you buy some of these magnets and hand them out themselves as well, to help offset the costs. Then have a section for lawn care and list only your phone number. Stick these on doors in your area and be sure that your number will stick around for quite some time. You could also have different discounts for services through out the year.

Attached Images

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What a fantastic idea Steve!

[Big Lebowski]

Totally another brilliant idea.

I would not include anybody that didn't participate in paying for the printing costs. However I would definitely include local municipalities like police, hospital, poison control etc. to keep the value beyond some lawn service with a large business card.

I am really, really impressed with this idea. The best part? If you include enough brick and mortar businesses, they will hand them out for you. Of course you could hand them out door to door but it wouldn't be completely necessary.

I am so thrilled about this I am going to start this today. Thank you Steve!

[Steve]

Great! Let us know how this works!

[Big Lebowski]

OK. I had a rain day today and when I saw this thing I knew right away it is something I wanted to do and do right away. Except rather than Steve's original idea, I actually thought of a two fold money maker.

1. Put something together with just me under lawn care as suggested above.

2. Sell ads on this refrigerator magnet. My thoughts are selling them just like the place-mat ads except this is something that goes home and becomes a permanent part of the kitchen. It has emergency numbers on it, the main reason to pick one up and take it home. See picture. The idea is this. I sell ads to whomever wants in. I create or add them to a category on the magnet. They could be the only one or with several other businesses in the same category - like pizza places - there are tons of them around here. They will pay for the one-liner just like the yellow pages. Bold and extra lines would be extra $$. If they want the exclusive, that would be at a premium price. I would sell ads until the space is full - just like a place-mat.

My plan is to decide how much I want to make per run. I have something in mind right now but I don't think i will share these ideas. I will keep selling ads until it's full and to any type of business that wants to participate.

Distribution is this. All brick and mortar locations will get the magnets to place on their counters until everyone that wants one, takes one home. The positive is they are advertising to folks that are already familiar with their services, but because these are located at other establishments, they can benefit from their customers also. How awesome is that? No need for me to distribute by the piece.

I will commit to a certain number of prints and distribute them to businesses based on traffic. Below is an example I came up with that is shown on a 8.5 x 11 sheet but it is sized to the size I have researched for the actual product. I will see if the company will send me an example to show to potential customers, or maybe they can send me one with my own artwork as an example. Of course once I get the first print done, I can then use one of those as an example. I may even low-ball my first small run and get the closest local businesses on board and get a kick off started and see what pitfalls arise, and work out any kinks.

So how do I continue to make money? Two ways. First of all these are all local based businesses. And just like all of you I have many boroughs, and towns, cities near me. I could literately keep selling these until I sold 3-4 runs in each town and never repeat the same business twice. I hate to say it but I think this is going to blow up huge. The second way to make money is the same premise as the yellow book. They do one every year. It's not like they made one book and said, "well boys, what do we do now?". Keep selling to those that want on and I can assure you that once other company reps see your product out there being picked up by other customers, they will almost beg to be apart of it. Especially if their competition is on there.

I could sell ads in even bigger areas near me. I feel this idea is so incredible and that taking it just a step further can turn this into something outrageous. Oh and letting you in on it is no problem either. There are so many towns & cities across this crazy planet that the chance that you step on my area would be nearly impossible. And even if there were two of us here, there are so many areas and businesses, there is enough to go around.

I'm really excited about this. Thank you Steve for yet another brilliant idea. The only thing I am thinking about ahead of time is that some businesses may want their town or location listed so they get calls from the folks in their area. But we'll see. I am working the next few days so I won't be able to get started canvasing this but I can assure you, if I were free tomorrow, I would knocking doors and talking to business owners and managers. So in the meantime I will show this to a few business friends of mine, see what they think and more importantly see if they want to participate.

Peace!

[Steve]

Those are great ideas!

You know if you could get it working in your area, you could potentially do this in other areas you don't even offer lawn care service for. It could be a great winter money maker and you could keep charging more and printing more as needed.

[Big Lebowski]

Absolutely. I went into this at first thinking that I would get my name out there and let others pay for it and maybe even make a few bucks from the proceeds.

Then I started crunching the numbers and wow. I knew this could be a big hit not to mention quite profitable. So next my thoughts went to Syracuse which is a really big area and 45 mins to an hour away at 65 mph. This is way too far for me to do lawn care but defiantly not too far to sell ads.

So I am curious of what your thoughts are to all of this? What about the example? Do you think it would be something you - yourself would do?

I happen to know that the people that sell place mats around here don't print them at all. They just sell. In fact I never placed an ad with them because I never trusted them to print (or have printed) the amounts they said they would. Let's face it their only cost is the actual printing and the gas to get you to give them money. Anyway that was my experience with them and I always felt that $350 was too expensive for very little assurance that my ad would make it on front of potential customers. See the restaurants that got them, got them for free so they never cared what was on them, who bought what, or how many they got. So the people selling them would resell them over and over and do lots of short runs. I'd say there would be maybe 20 ads on a place mat, multiply that by $350 and they took in $7000 and promised to print 3000 or whatever then they would have 500 printed and then move to the next 20 ads. Around and around they would go until they were in your face again. How would you know? I never advertised on anything that wasn't tangible. At least something measurable. Some people might look at them while they wait for food but your business would soon be forgotten when the food arrived and you certainly never walk out with a place mat to take home.

[Steve]

Those are good points. I like the idea and I think it's viable but as with everything else, no one knows for sure what will happen until it's tried

[Big Lebowski]

I knew it. I totally knew it.

I sold 7 out of 9 people ads today on this idea. I had to stop because I had to be somewhere but you bet your *ss I will be out again tomorrow. I'm actually disappointed that I made an appointment to do some clean-up tomorrow because this by far exceeds any amount I will make doing that. I will do it later in the day.

I am not quiting lawns just yet ** but I will tell you this. I made more today (gross and net) than I could make mowing all day. And I only had 4 hours to do it and I spent less than 15 minutes with each person.

I am truly blown away right now and anxious to get going tomorrow. I just knew it.

[Steve]

Rob,

Congratulations!

How many of these people that you sold to are people that already knew you versus people you just met?

Were you just walking into stores and proposing the idea?

Did you bring any kind of sample with you? How did you present the idea to them?